Road Rangers can be lifesavers

Encountering a woman crying in a car on Interstate 4 isn't unusual for Joe Startz, a Road Ranger for the Florida Department of Transportation.

He has eased fears before by changing tires, adding fuel to tanks and aiding in directions.

This time it was different. This time he saved a life.

Road Rangers, who are part of a state program that offers free highway assistance, have proven to be at the right place at the right time.

For some motorists, that means help with more than their typical roadside emergency.

Road Rangers have delivered babies from women who couldn't get to a hospital in time and stopped drunken teenagers from doing push-ups in the middle of I-4 at 3 a.m.

A few stopped traffic in Osceola County so a duck and her ducklings could safely cross I-4, and another Road Ranger carried greyhounds from a burning trailer near Deltona.

"You never know what you are going to get when you stop at a [stranded] car," said Road Ranger Heriberto Echevarria, 26, of Orlando, who has called I-4 his office for three years.

Their training, including car mechanics, traffic management and first aid, doesn't prepare them for everything that happens on the highway. Common sense and instincts have to get them through the rest, said Ricky Gonzalez, Startz's supervisor at regional transit agency Lynx.

On July 31, Startz, 41, stopped his Ford F-350 diesel truck alongside a weeping woman's sport utility vehicle parked on the shoulder near the BeachLine Expressway exit and asked what she needed. It was raining, and the 5 p.m. traffic was picking up.

"She was lost, and her husband had given her wrong directions to Sand Lake Road," said Startz, who lives in Apopka. "I tried to give her directions, but she wasn't getting it."

Still crying, the woman's cell phone rang.

Startz listened as she became more upset with the person on the other end.

She hung up, but it rang again.

Startz, who once installed auto glass and was a volunteer firefighter in Connecticut, wasn't expecting what happened next.

The woman yelled into the phone that she was going to kill herself and threw the phone. She removed her seat belt, opened her door and ran into I-4 rush-hour traffic.

"Oh, Lord. She's going to get hit," Startz remembered thinking.

More than a dozen motorists zoomed by -- some honking their horns.

She stood facing traffic with her eyes shut and her hands clenched at her side.

"I'm yelling, `Ma'am, come back to the shoulder,' " Startz said.

An advice a Florida Highway Patrol trooper once gave him ran through his mind: Don't grab a person is this situation because she may pull you into traffic.

Startz -- wearing his neon uniform vest -- waved at drivers to slow down and move to other lanes. As more vehicles sped past the woman, Startz had to do something else.

"I reached over and grabbed her shirt and pulled her toward me," he said.

"She didn't say a word and ran back to her car," Startz said.

Fearing she would drive away, Startz called on his radio for help.

Now, she sat behind the wheel with a 6-inch curved knife held at her wrist.